How To Resign From The Mormon Church

Leaving the Mormon Church

Each year thousands of people decide to formally resign from the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is popularly known as the Mormon or 'LDS' church. The church releases detailed annual statistics about membership numbers, but they never include the numbers about resignations.

This site was created to provide information on how to leave the Mormon church. The church calls this process 'name removal' and members call it 'getting your name off the records of the church' even though the church never removes a member's name from the records at all. What they do when you resign is indicate in the records that you are no longer a member, that your name was 'removed' on such-and-such a date.

No matter your reason for wanting to resign from the church, this site is here to assist you with that process.

If you decide to resign from the church, be sure to read at least two sections of this site BEFORE resigning. Read the Instructions and The Process. In The Process there is information about what is most likely to happen after you mail your resignation letter. If you send in a resignation and they RETURN your letter to you, see the section about that; RETURNED LETTERS.

Even though you have a legal right to resign from a church, the Mormon church isn't very gracious about letting people go. If they wanted, they could make the process efficient and they could treat resigning members with respect. Instead, leaders of the church have chosen to make it a lengthy and difficult process. Perhaps they want to make it an unpleasant process in order to discourage people from resigning. We'll keep trying to convince them to handle resignations promptly and with respect.